THE 
EDINBURGH 
PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 
Art. I. — The Geological Deluge , as interpreted by Baron Cu- 
vier and Professor Buckland , inconsistent with the testimony 
of Moses and the Phenomena of Nature. By the Rev. John 
Fleming, D. D., F. R. S. E. (Communicated by the Au- 
thor.) 
T* HE science of Geology was first introduced to public notice, 
in this country, by philosophers who, while they cherished a re- 
verential regard for the authority of the Scriptures, overlooked 
those methods of investigation which lead to a discovery of the 
laws of nature. Assuming that the first principles of geology 
were revealed to Moses, and communicated in the Book of Ge- 
nesis, they were satisfied with a comparison of the scanty no- 
tices there given of the history of the Earth with the phenome- 
na presented by its surface, even when the character and relation 
of these phenomena remained in a state of comparative obscuri- 
ty. The original condition of the materials with which the 
Creator formed this Globe, long occupied the attention of those 
early cosmogonists ; and, as the history of Moses was too meagre 
in its details to serve their purpose, and the Earth failed to ex- 
hibit the suitable documents, the imagination was called upon 
to supply that which neither the words nor the works of the 
Deity furnished. These reveries, however, usually termed 
Theories of the Earth, do not call for any comment at present. 
The cause by which the deluge was produced, and the changes 
which it effected on the appearance of the globe, occupied the 
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